Nextcloud server version (e.g. 29.x.x): nextcloud-client-3.15.3-2.fc41.x86_64
nextcloud-client-3.16.0 under Windows 11
Operating system and version (e.g. Ubuntu 24.04): Fedora 41 & Windows 11
Summary of the problem you are experiencing :
I’m having a problem configuring synchronization. I’d like to continue synchronizing the same folder (same partition, same disk), but using two different operating systems, one at a time. I use Linux and a little less regularly Windows for work. How can I synchronize this folder with both systems?
Until now, it worked with a complete resynchronization of the first configuration on the second OS, but now I have a message telling me that this is not advisable and it doesn’t work. Is there another solution?
I don’t want to switch from one system to another just to synchronize my folder.
Thanks in advance.
Hi,
you didn’t mention which versions of the Nextcloud clients you have installed on both systems. Older versions can sometimes cause unexpected issues, especially when syncing across multiple OSes.
For context, I’ve personally been using synchronization between Windows 11 and CachyOS until recently, and everything worked just fine — no issues syncing the same folder across both systems.
If you’re on Fedora and it turns out you’re using an older version from the official repositories, you can try using the AppImage version of the client, which is often more up to date and works independently of your system’s package manager.
Just make sure both systems are using the same sync configuration, and let us know which client versions you’re running — it’ll help diagnose the issue further.
Thanks for replying, I’ve changed the message to the version used with windows.
The problem is that it worked fine before. I reinstalled my linux distribution, and I can’t reconfigure the synchronization folder. A message tells me that the folder is in use.
Apparently, I can delete the file linked to the nextcloud client in this synchonization folder (.sync…db) but I’ll have to resynchronize almost 60 GB.
Re-syncing is what I always do when I reinstall the OS on my computer, and that’s probably the safest way to do it. I don’t even back up the nextcloud folder before, just a few dot files, configs, and a few other things I have exclusively in $HOME, which isn’t much anymore since I started using nextcloud.
So here is what I would do. I would remove your account from the client. Then rename the Nextcloud folder on the computer, or move it to an external drive if you don’t have enough space to have the data twice on the PC. Then log in to the clinet again and synchronize/download all the files from the server to a new folder. Then delete the old folder.
If you decide to keep trying with the existing folder, make a copy of it if you haven’t already, just to be on the safe side. But it’s probably not worth the effort unless your Nextcloud is hosted externally and your internet connection is slow, but even then it could probably have downloaded the 60GB multiple times in the 9 hours since your initial post
In the end, I deleted the .db files in the folders to be synchronized, and the synchronization worked without resynchronizing everything (even though it’s very, very slow, but that must be another problem due to the linux client).
Back on Windows, I’ve resynchronized everything and I’ve got messages in red for each of the accounts:
“This configuration may cause data loss and is no longer supported.”
But it seems to work despite this message.
